Sudan and rebels traded accusations on Monday but vowed to press ahead under African Union mediation with their first peace talks in nearly a year.

The United Nations has urged Khartoum and rebels from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), who began talks in the Ethiopian capital on Thursday, to declare an immediate ceasefire so aid can reach more than one million civilians.

The U.N. Thursday urged Sudan and rebels, meeting for their first peace talks in almost a year, to reach an immediate ceasefire so aid can reach more than one million civilians.

Negotiations between Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) were to begin Thursday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, under African Union mediation.

A landmine killed five people and wounded 13 in Sudan's South Kordofan, state radio reported Wednesday, the eve of peace talks for the war-torn state on the South Sudan border.

"Sudanese Red Crescent Society says five people were killed and 13 wounded in a landmine explosion" in the north of the state, Radio Omdurman said in an SMS message which gave no further details.

Sudan and rebels from South Kordofan are to meet Thursday for their first peace talks in almost a year, aiming to end a war that has affected more than one million people.

The Ethiopia negotiations come two weeks after Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir appealed for a political and economic "renaissance," with peace as the top priority, in his war-ravaged and poverty-stricken nation.

Egyptian and Sudanese security officers have colluded with traffickers accused of holding Eritrean migrants for ransom and torturing them, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Victims accused the traffickers of raping both women and men, administering electric shocks and burning genitalia and other body parts with hot irons, boiling water and molten plastic, the New York-based rights group said.

Regional mediators formally opened a new round of South Sudan peace talks Tuesday with an opening ceremony held in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

The talks, involving representatives of President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, are set to begin in earnest on Wednesday morning and are aimed at addressing the root causes of the nearly two-month-old conflict in the world's youngest nation.

The United Nations mission in South Sudan reported widespread looting after a patrol in the strategic market town of Bor, which has changed hands several times in the conflict, officials said Friday.

The peacekeepers also found that the northeastern oil town of Malakal was "deserted and generally quiet," U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Had told reporters.

Carjackings and robberies drove a doubling of security incidents involving foreign aid groups in Sudan's war-torn Darfur last year, U.N. data show, reflecting the worsening unrest there during 2013.

The data, obtained by AFP, show there were 66 incidents in total -- ranging from threats to break-ins and killings -- which was up from 31 for 2012.

The impact of unrest in South Sudan on India's $2 billion investment in the region's oil sector will be under discussion when New Delhi's foreign minister makes a rare visit to Khartoum this week.

"It will be featuring in the talks," India's ambassador to Sudan, S.K. Verma, told Agence France Presse ahead of the two-day visit by External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid.

Ceasefire monitors have begun work in South Sudan, officials said Monday, amid repeated claims both government and rebels are breaking a deal to stop weeks of bloodshed in which thousands have been killed.

Clashes continue despite the deal signed last month by government and rebels, brokered by the East African bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).